The Wood Brothers Simply Live

The Wood Brothers perform at The Moore Theatre in Seattle, March 2017.Photos: Todd Berkowitz

The unique folk-Americana-country-indefinable trio known as the Wood Brothers—Chris and Oliver Wood, and multi-instrumentalist Jano Rix—have embarked on a U.S. tour of clubs and theaters, with festivals and curve balls thrown in throughout the summer. Supported by Special Event Services in Nashville, the tour makes use of venue racks and stacks, carrying everything from source to driveline in a Sprinter van.

FOH engineer Daniel P. Ramirez carries a Midas Pro2c console with DL351 I/O, running IEMs from FOH. He makes use of the onboard effects package: Room, Hall, Delay, KT DN780, Tape Saturation, Multiband Compressor. The band occupies 29 input channels, including “Big Mic” (when the three huddle around a single mic, Ear Trumpet Labs Myrtle, for a couple of songs) and two ambient mics for the band’s IEMs.

FOH engineer Daniel P. Ramirez

“When I was coming up, I remember always being told that the most important thing you could do when you mix is to create as much separation as possible between all your sources,” Ramirez says. “With this band, I want everything to gel together and sound like it’s coming from a cohesive source.

“I build my drum sound around a Telefunken M82 on the kick and a pair of Telefunken M60-FETs directly over the snare in X-Y configuration,” he continues. “This is blended with an old EV 660 on snare top, Sennheiser E904 on snare bottom, a Shure SM57 on hi-hat, and a Sennheiser MD421 underneath the Pandiero.

“The bulk of the guitar sound is a Telefunken CU-29 Copperhead on Oliver Wood’s main guitar amp, a cheap 4-watt tube amp from the early 1960s with a 6-inch paper speaker. This gets mixed with a Sennheiser E906 on another funky old tube amp. I’m using 906s on the keyboard amp and bass amp, as well.

“Most of the acoustic bass sound comes through a David Gage Lifeline pickup run through Radial PZ-DIs. Depending on the mood of the segment, the 906 on the amp and a DPA 4099 near the f-hole might get mixed in. Electric bass is a combination of the pickups direct into a Radial J48 and the 906 on the amp.

“For Jano Rix’s Shuitar, a guitar rigged up with all sorts of junk that is played as a percussion instrument, the main source is a K&K pickup through an active DI (KT DN100) that we run unpowered.

“At the risk of sounding cheesy, the greatest thing about this tour is being lucky enough to have a phenomenal band, touring crew, and support team to work with every day.”